88 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

Our territory, to be sure, is not very extensive. The Cleo* patra is a dahahiyehj seventy feet long by ten broad. She has two short masts in the bow and stern, the first upholding the irin/ceet, a lateen sail nearly seventy feet in length. The latter carries the helikon a small sail, and the American colors. The narrow space around the foremast belongs to the crew, who cook their meals in a small brick furnace, and sit on the gunwale, beating a drum and tambourine and singing for hours in interminable choruses, when the wind blows fair. If there is no wind, half of them are on shore, tugging us slowly along the banks with a long tow-rope, and singing all day long : '-'• Aya kamdm—aya hamdm / " If we strike on a sand-bank, they jump into the river and put their shoulders against the hull, singing : " hay-haylee sah ! " If the current is slow, they ship the oars and pull us up stream, singing so complicated a refrain that it is impossible to write it with other than Arabic characters. There are eight men and a boy, besides our stately rais, Hassan Abd el-Sadek, and the swarthy pilot, who greets ua every morning with a whole round of Arabic salutations.

Against an upright pole which occupies the place of a mainmast, stands our kitchen, a high wooden box, with three furnaces. Here our cook, Salame, may be seen at all times, with the cowl of a blue capote drawn over his turban, preparing the marvellous dishes, wherein his delight is not less than ours.

Salame, like a skilful artist, as he is, husbands his resources, and each day astonishes us with new preparations, so that, out of few materials, he has attained the grand climax of all art— variety in unity. Achmet, my faithful dragoman, has his station here, and keeps one eye on the vessel and one on the kitchen, while between tlie two he does not relax his protecting care for